


Best Served Cold

by Wandrian



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drama, F/M, Humor, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-09-17 22:29:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9349109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wandrian/pseuds/Wandrian
Summary: She was a witch, only Olivia Charles never got the memo. Having never received her Hogwarts acceptance letter, Liv grew up concealing her magical abilities. Until, one day, she steps through the Leaky Cauldron's doors on a whim and into a world of enchantment, dark lords, and guys on flying motorcycles. Trouble and tomfoolery abounds, and also something greater than all magic.





	1. Coffeehouses and Cauldrons

**Author's Note:**

>   
> _"We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are."_  
>  -Sirius Black

It started off, like many things, with a levitated tea kettle.

Had Olivia Charles been a witch, or even dimly aware of the existence of magic, this would have been a perfectly reasonable happenstance. But she was not, nor was she even remotely aware that numerous eleven-year-olds were annually carted off to a castle in the Scotland highlands to master the art of levitating many a kettle. She was, therefore, a Muggle, and did not appreciate when kitchenware took flight.

Or the fact that strange things like these often happened to her. It had been equal parts startling and exhilarating in the beginning, when she was a youngster and she'd imagined the bogies Phillip Aplin was ferrying from his snot-bubbly nostrils to his small, gaping maw to become bona fide honeybees. Unfortunately for Phil, insect venom caused him minor anaphylaxis, and so a moment or two after she had this mildly nefarious thought, he found himself puffing up like a red-headed cabbage. Fortunately for little Liv, no one in the vicinity was a Legilimens to discover that it was, indeed, her four-year-old brain that had transfigured toddler boogers into a swarm of very confused bugs.

It escalated from there, but only intermittently. These episodes stretched throughout periods of time, often so much as a year, that many an occurrence she chalked up to her imagination running amok—charming a stranger's Fu Manchu to braid itself, however, had swiftly squelched that theory.

Time passed. And as these phenomenons ranged immensely in terms of strangeness, Liv was left growing up with quite the complex, one wherein she believed that she was a literal freak of nature. Then the notion occurred to her that maybe she wasn't the only freak of nature to have accidentally transfigured their mother's sleeping pills into high potency laxatives. Surely there was a perfectly legitimate reason behind these uncontrollable abilities, but as she never received a letter from a particular school of witchcraft and wizardry on her eleventh year, Liv remained none the wiser, and vowed to never speak of these incidences in fear of being institutionalized and living in a padded room with nary but a bedpan and twelve imaginary cats named Harold.

Now, nearly two decades of repression later, Olivia Charles had blossomed into quite the misanthrope, and so she deemed this shit was getting old.

"This shit is getting old," Liv muttered, chin propped atop her folded arms. She sat at a coffeehouse's kitchen table, covered nearly head-to-toe in flour.

Scones were baking in the oven. The scent of almonds wafted in the air. The hazy rays of dawn filtered through crocheted curtain panels and, there, wavering above the sink, was her grandmother's old copper tea kettle. Suspended. Floating. In midair. A line of steam was erupting from its spout, emitting a long banshee wail although it was quite clearly nowhere near an open flame.

Liv pointed at the teapot. "Stop it," she commanded. "Stop it, I say."

It did not stop. Liv inched her fingers towards a battered rolling pin, wherein the tea kettle's shriek momentarily faltered when her fingertips skimmed the wooden handle.

"That's right. You may have been granny's favorite kettle, but I will _take–you–out_. Yakuza style."

Liv took a deep, cathartic breath and closed her eyes.

"I'm talking to a tea kettle," she breathed. "A gravity defying tea kettle. And threatening it with Japanese underground crime syndicate violence. Lovely."

The tea kettle commenced to shriek.

A loud commotion resounded from behind, which involved that of crashing, thrashing, the unmistakable upturning of several chairs, and a litany of expletives before the image of Lucy Gallagher stumbled into Cloverdilly Coffee's small backroom kitchen. She was clutching her head, swaying, possibly still drunk as it was only half-past four in the morning. A dressing gown hung from one arm and trailed behind, jerking with her movements as did the silver-lavender curls that framed her face in a halo of bed-head frizz.

"Liv?" she murmured lethargically. "I get that you run on baker's hours and you're busy, but why _the hell_ does it sound like you've lit a cat on fire?"

"Three hundred and fifty-one," Liv replied.

"Pardon?"

"Three hundred and fifty-one days since something like..." Liv gestured wildly to the tea kettle, "has happened."

Lucy regarded the kettle, blinked twice, and sighed. Pulling a stool opposite Liv, she burrowed her head into her arms with an uncoordinated _thump_ , which caused a small mushroom cloud of flour to explode between the two girls.

Lucy Gallagher constituted of poorly dyed hair and the tapering green eyes one found in a Botticelli painting. She was tall and bird-boned, often bedecked in floral summer dresses and circular sunglasses and a 1000W smile she beamed for strangers and friends alike, and possessed the otherworldly optimism to match. Liv was convinced she farted stardust.

More importantly, she was the only person who knew the truth of Olivia Charles. This made her much more than trustworthy, but invaluable. Like quality toilet paper.

Olivia Charles, in comparison, was quite the opposite of Lucy Gallagher. Tiny, grumpy, with a shaggy mop of brunette hair and a penchant for combat boots and stress baking to Tchaikovsky violin concertos. Opposites attracted, apparently, because they had been best mates since primary school and roomies since graduation. Their initial meeting at the ripe age of five had involved a hairy mutant she-child of a bully named Maria Fowl, who had ripped apart the daisy chain wreathed into Lucy's hair on the first day of school. Liv, who was still small for her age but aging well into her grumpiness, refused to stand by and allow someone to take that kind of shit.

She had only meant to point at fuzzy Maria Diarrhea and unleash a cutting wisecrack, but within a blink of an eye, Maria found herself straddling the branch of a nearby tree, as follicle-free as a naked mole rat. Liv was equal parts horrified and humiliated that someone had witnessed her abilities. Maria's acrophobia was thus born. Lucy was awe-struck. Their friendship immediately blossomed.

"It's obvious, isn't it?" came Lucy's discombobulated voice.

"What is?"

"You're cursed."

The tea kettle whistled louder, evidently agreeing.

 _So much for otherworldly optimism_ , Liv thought, then muttered, "Bollocks."

Lucy laughed, lifting her head and palming a cheekbone. "Well, you are the one that stole a tangerine from that old gypsy lady's bag when we were thirteen."

"I was hungry," Liv shrugged.

"You're _always_ hungry."

Liv nodded. "This is true. And also why I'm co-owner of this jolly little cesspit of a coffeehouse," she continued, then turned to the screeching kettle whose enthusiasm knew no bounds. " _Oi_ , Freddie Mercury, will you give it a bloody _rest_?"

Lucy offhandedly drew a daisy into the layer of flour on the tabletop, looking momentarily pensive. She bit a lip, hesitant, before breaching into a subject that held the taboo equivalence of a no man's land.

"Have you thought of what I mentioned before?"

"I'm not living in a cardboard box under the bridge."

"I meant speaking to your father about this," Lucy ventured, gauging her friend's reaction. "He _is_ a doctor."

Something flickered within Liv's eyes—a medley of hurt and anger, and maybe something more. Which sent red flags flying. Olivia Charles was a persnickety creature by default, which meant the words 'fuck off' often concluded their tête-à-têtes when speaking of Ludovico Charles.

Surprisingly, Liv merely snorted.

"Of _pediatrics_. I'm well past the age of shatting in nappies, I thank you."

"That's debatable."

Liv's answering smile was impish and lopsided, which immediately created a set of dimples to appear. But then her dark eyes turned somber and she glanced away, huffing so that her bangs fluttered. Slowly, her small hands curled into white-knuckled fists, a telltale sign this conversation was, indeed, approaching restricted territory. Then she sighed.

"He retired years ago. And what am I going to say to him? 'Ay, daddio, we haven't spoken in years because you agreed to the terms set by a harpy of an ex-wife that you wouldn't contact your one and only child? No birthday card, no ugly Christmas sweater, no address so that I could at least _write_ to you?' Or how about this: 'Greetings, it is I, your spawn, who has not so recently been experiencing strange magical powers. Oh, I have a calcium deficiency? Grand. I'll remedy that by buying a fucking milk cow. _Ta_."

"You've had that prepared for a while, haven't you?"

" _Ja_."

"Well, speaking of these idyllic family chats," Lucy continued, redirecting the topic towards somewhat friendly waters, "Your mum called last night."

"Of course she did," Liv responded, grabbing a nearby whisk. She brandished it towards Lucy accusingly, causing gobs of buttercream to fling between them. "You said her name three times in the mirror, didn't you? That's why you took so long in the bathroom."

The sound of the front door unlocking quieted both girls. Lucy glanced at the old clock above the sink whilst Liv took the moment to glower derisively at the kettle. Soon, the coffeehouse's main lights were turned on, illuminating into the kitchen in a soft, yellowish glow. Not long thereafter the quiet rumblings of a masculine voice could be heard, then the scraping of several chairs being put aright.

"Why does Will have to be so damn punctual?" Lucy hissed in a whisper.

"This is just a shot in the dark so, please, tell me if I'm wrong," Liv replied. "But it's _probably_ because he owns this coffeehouse, too. Don't take my word for it. I'm untrustworthy. I suspend tea kettles midair with my brain."

"Liv, not helping."

"Fine. They levitate."

Lucy raised a brow. "And you care to explain to Will _why_ it's levitating?"

The tea kettle whistled louder.

"Shit, you're both right."

The two blurred into motion, flurrying around the table and bolting for the tea kettle. Lucy, still within the thralls of a hangover, miscalculated her reach and missed the pot entirely—effectively causing her arm to careen towards her face instead.

"Ouch!"

Liv laughed. "Brilliant."

Liv fared little better, considering her fingertips barely skimmed the copper bottom, even when going full _en pointe_. Lucy, having regained control of her physical faculties, returned to her friend's side with a broom in hand. She snickered, brushing Liv aside.

"If they ever make _The Hobbit_ into a ballet production," she said quietly, taking aim and knocking down the kettle. "I'll be sorely disappointed if you don't audition for Bilbo."

Liv caught the tea kettle, which mercifully had decided to cease and desist of all whistling. She cast a withering gaze to her left.

"A mighty harr harr to you, Azog," she countered.

At that moment William Eames meandered into the kitchen, stopping within the threshold at the sight before him: a shroud of flour settling between Lucy and Liv, who were frozen in place as they stared owl-eyed at him, one wielding a broom like a weapon of old, the other clutching a tea kettle to her chest.

Slowly, Lucy waved. Will raised a brow.

Liv sighed.

William Eames was rugged and tall, but nearly everyone was tall in Liv's eyes, who capped little over five feet. His late teens were spent wrestling in underground tournaments, which left him heavily scarred, tattooed, and muscled. At twenty, he could be deemed handsome if he weren't so intense, with his hair cropped short and sporting a scruffy beard and crystalline blue eyes.

He had been a late addition to Liv's life, having met just three years prior at a farmer's market, somehow initiating a good-natured argument over what the correct spelling of a fried dough confectionery was.

"It's doughnut, dammit! It's made out of dough, not _do_ ," Liv had admonished vehemently. "Donut is for wankers."

Then, Liv had not been aware such a response had caused Will to laugh for the first time in years. Nor that he had instantly admired her chutzpah and the unerring spark in her eyes, and even more so for the fact that she refused to be intimidated by him one iota. Their discourses escalated from there, and they fit cozily into the crannies of each others lives. And because nobody baked better pastries than Olivia Charles, nor brewed coffee than William Eames, they morphed their friendship into business.

Now, Liv was not aware of the friction between Will and Lucy. Nor that he felt her best mate had something hidden up her sleeve, something that made the hairs on his arms stand on end because he _knew_ —deep down, instinctively—Lucy Gallagher was whitewashing some tremendous, uncanny secret, and that he was dedicated to ferreting out what. Having been part of a fight club meant crossing off more names on his shit list than adding them, and so William Eames had vowed that whatever threat swung above Olivia Charles's head would never gain enough momentum to drop.

Unfortunately for Will, his gut feeling was horribly misdirected.

Fortunately for Liv, this would bite her in the ass at a _much_ later date.

"Gallagher, prudent as usual," Will greeted, stepping into the kitchen and nodding towards the dressing gown still attached Lucy via a sleeve.

It was still draped on the ground, exposing her nightwear, which involved lacy knickers and camisole that left very little to the imagination. Which, frankly, many a man would kill to see. But as Lucy Gallagher never lacked with that particular brand of attention, nor entertained it, she shrugged.

Meanwhile Liv had taken the opportunity to regain composure, and so she busied herself by filling the tea kettle with water and set it to boil atop the stove. Lucy still held the broom aloft like a sword, so she tugged it free and, being the uncontrollable clean freak that she was, sent it careening into the nearest corner of the kitchen. Her heart was still racing.

 _Act normal_ , she thought heatedly, willing the adrenaline to abide. _Don't let it show. You've perfected the art of pretenses. Roll with it, Charles._

Her face burned, realizing how close a call it had been and wondered, not for the first time, what the hell she was going to do about these freakish incidents. On the bright side, her aptitude of magically manipulating everyday people, places, and things hadn't developed in terms of strangeness, or become more and more frequent within the past eighteen years. But concealing bat-shit crazy powers was taxing on one's mental health, because one slip-up meant things could turn physical.

On a completely unrelated note, Liv had read about the Salem Witch Trials.

Yeah. _No_ , thank _you_.

A shadow fell across the counter where she was setting up a tray for morning tea. It was Will, of course, because even his shadow was looming and he perpetually smelled of espresso and worn leather. This pulled her from a sea of fatalistic thoughts, thankfully, but Liv had to think twice about keeping the quiver out of her hands when setting down a pair of chipped teacups.

Turning, she met his gaze, which was serious and made severe by the brightness of his eyes.

"Liv," he said in way of greeting, voice cavernous, and nodded towards the oven. "Scones?"

She laughed shakily.

"Yeah, almond. Tried my hand at rakvicka, but botched them so badly I'll probably soon be rotting in a Czechoslovakian prison. I also hit the farmer's market as they set up and bought a small elephant's body-weight worth in blueberries. I was thinking you could make your legendary secret recipe? You're our resident muffin man, after all."

" _Ha_ ," Lucy snorted. "Muffin man."

Will frowned, stuffing one hand into his trouser pocket, while the other he reached forward to tilt Liv's head upward. As they were both creatures of habit and this display of physical contact was _not_ habitual, this sent her mind scuttling about for understanding. And failed. Cleverly, she froze.

Hazy morning light fell across her face and she saw Will's brows descend further. Behind, unbeknownst to them, Lucy rolled her eyes.

"When was the last time you slept?" he asked, eyes lingering on the dark shadows beneath her own.

Lucy raised her hand. "Oh, oh! I know!" she offered, and was ignored.

One fact about Olivia Charles: she was unreasonably independent—clearly a trait rare amongst teenagers worldwide. But having been abandoned at the age of eleven by her father, then kicked out of the house at sixteen so her mother could start a new family, her survival instincts and bull-shit detector had been honed into a fine point of distrust. She excelled at being autonomous.

So, although Will's genuine concern warmed her heart, Liv bristled.

"If I wanted to be coddled, Eames, I would go to my moth—oh, wait, no I wouldn't. My mum doesn't possess maternal instincts. If I wanted to be coddled, Eames," she reiterated, tapering off, "I'd...I'd...I'd _rent_ a mother."

Lucy snorted. Even Will's mouth quirked to the side, backing off and removing his hand to shove into his other pocket; even he knew not to gallivant into uncharted territory.

A melodramatic sigh had both Will and Liv turning their attention onto Lucy, who was once again etching a daisy into the flour sifted tabletop and glancing slantwise at the pair to see if they were looking or not. Realizing she had Liv's full attention, she disregarded the unimpressed stare leveled her way and broke out into a sly grin.

"It's official," she mused. "You haven't slept in days, you botched a recipe—hey, don't look at me like that—and you've fallen so far as to be making lame-ass little zingers. Olivia Lauren Charles is officially in _the mood_."

"What the hell," Liv glowered, folded her arms across her chest. "are you talking about?"

"That sounded sexual, didn't it?" Lucy laughed uncomfortably, but stopped when Will scowled at her. "And now I'm getting _the look_."

A moment of silence later showed Lucy having the good sense to look abashed, and said, "That also sounded sexual. Drat."

"Whose idea was it," Will started, turning towards Liv. "to unleash her onto the unsuspecting masses?"

"Hey!"

"I'm still wondering which damaged part of her brain coined the term 'lame-ass little zingers'," Liv responded, one side of her mouth lifting into a smile.

"Hey!"

Will laughed, a rare, thunderous sound. "Maybe she's just acting out for attention."

"Yes, someone rub my belly," Lucy quipped, then: "Sexual innuendo intended."

Liv blinked. "Nerd, come here."

"Why?"

"I need to give you a wedgie."

The trio broke out into quiet, comradely laughter. Lucy's grin was ethereal and infectious, and Will's wide smile warmed the intensity straight out of his eyes. For the first time all morning, Liv was given a moment of peace, surrounded by the only two people in the world that could pluck at her heartstrings. Tucked inside a small, cozy, cobbled kitchen within a small, shabby coffeehouse on the outskirts of London, life felt safe and right for the first time in a long time.

The levitating tea kettle fiasco felt nothing more than a distant memory.

Somewhere in the cosmos, however, Fate was cackling diabolically, knowing it was about to clock that feeling straight out of Liv's ass in precisely one hour and thirteen minutes when she strolled into a dank pub called the Leaky Cauldron.

"Liv, I think I know what Gallagher is getting at, and she's right," Will said, breaking the silence. Upon noting the bright, surprised expression on Lucy's face, he amended, "In her _very special_ way."

"What do you mean?" Liv narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

"Go. Go back to the flat. Get some rest. I'm pretty sure you're pushing 48 hours."

"I'm not leaving, Eames," she challenged, refusing to be pushed around by a man who could crush her skull with one hand. She poked him. "This is my shop too, mate, and I'm not jumping ship when we've just started accumulating a steady stream of customers."

"Gallagher volunteered to waitress. Go."

"I did?" Lucy asked.

Liv glared. Will regarded her coolly.

" _Go_."

Liv whined, " _William_ ," and debated whether or not she was personally above stomping her feet like a child.

"Olivia."

"Shit, busting out full names usually works."

He must have read something on her face, because the stern expression on Will's softened, which made Liv eyeball him with the utmost of suspicion; the duo got along famously because of their stubbornness, not their ability to back down. But then Will surprised Liv once more by closing the gap between them, reaching forward and wrapping an arm around her. Her mind failed to comprehend any meaning behind this and reacted by displaying a very challenging self defense technique, and froze.

He merely pulled at her apron's string, however, and when they unraveled he caught the apron, abruptly tossing it into her face.

Liv's answering glare was impressive.

Will snorted.

"I've known you long enough to know your ways, Charles. Stop needling," he said. "You're exhausted and you have lemon zest in your hair. You're also twitching, which means you're hiding something but too tired to realize you're overcompensating. Which I'll ask you about later. Now go."

Liv groaned, then peered around his shoulder. "Lucy, back me up?"

"Two words," Lucy said, who had been in the midst of licking frosting from a spoon. " _Tea—kettle_."

Olivia Charles sighed, knowing quite well when she was defeated. Normally she'd continue having a go arguing and perpetuating the idiom of beating a dead horse, but she didn't like the questioning look Will was casting her way. Instead, she flung the apron over her shoulder and strode towards the doorway.

"Alright, alright. I'll take a mental health day," she said. "But burn my scones and someone's face will meet the business side of my cheese-grater. I'm looking at _you_ , Gallagher."

"Hey!"

Seven minutes later saw Liv slamming the front door closed, having trundled up to the flat above Cloverdilly Coffee that she shared with Lucy to grab her jacket and bag. Had she'd known— _exactly_ —what the series of events that would spiral out of control in less than an hour's time entailed, she may have prepared herself better.

Or cowered in the bathtub, tinfoil hat bedecked, because if the government could read her mind they'd discover that she was not a one-woman freak show, but there were _thousands_ out there just like her. But educated. _With wands_.

And so Olivia Charles ventured out onto a busy London street, drawing the hood of her jacket up and shaking the bangs out of her dark eyes. Forty-eight minutes of introspective strolling ( _A tea kettle, Liv? A tea kettle. REALLY?_ ) from street to street later, hands shoved into her pockets and avoiding catching the eyes of passersby, Liv halted before the space between an old bookshop and record store on Charring Cross Road.

She cocked her head to the side.

"Since when has this been here?" she asked aloud, only to receive a series of strange glances from a couple who moseyed past.

Liv did not know that said couple were, indeed, Muggles, who saw only a young, scowling girl talking to the uninviting sight of an broken down shop before her. To be fair, Liv too looked upon the dark, worn facade of a very old building—but only she saw through the door's yellowed windowpane and looked upon a silhouette moving about within the glimmering of light, a light which felt both warm and welcoming to her. And only she saw the iron-wrought bracket above the doorway, one that bore no sign of the establishment, but a mere rusting cauldron that swayed to and fro.

Liv eyed the cauldron a moment longer, then the brass doorknob below. Her fingers twitched.

Sighing, she stepped forward.

"Fine, but if I walk in there and discover a coven of witches brewing some eye of newt potion," Liv said, steeling herself. "I'm officially going to be having a really bad day."


	2. The Great Disappearing Act

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, dear readers, for your interest. This one is short and sweet. Think of it as a springboard to where the fun _really_ begins. Onward!

As it turned out, wandering into the Leaky Cauldron had been a terrible idea. But at least the events that unfolded there elicited a news headline that many a reader of _The Quibbler_ would appreciate.

**Female Muggle Breaches Magical Establishment. Orders Lager. Is Threatened by Wandpoint.**

"It's a'right, love. You just caught me by surprise. No one's gonna hurt you. We'll get an Obliviator here and you'll be as fit as a fiddle in no time."

Olivia Charles was not convinced.

She was currently taking refuge behind an overturned table, knees pulled up to her chest, small fingers snaking into her hair to grab purchase of something _real_ whilst trying desperately hard to grapple with what had just occurred. Adrenaline surged through her veins, which did nothing for her harried nerves. With each passing moment, however, she was delighted to feel the initial shock tapering off. In its wake the cognitive part of her brain that housed the majority of her bullheadedness resumed control, heart slowing its frenzied tempo against her rib-cage.

Liv released a long, illustrative string of expletives under her breath. Now, she was downright _mad_.

Mad that bad luck seemed to follow her in spades like some dithering extension of Murphy's Law. Mad, because how unreasonable was it to have one normal, sane morning where tea kettles didn't levitate and innkeepers didn't accost her with wands?

Wands!

Liv pinched the bridge of her nose. "None of this would have happened if I'd learned kung fu."

Long ago, she had come to terms with her abnormality, that her genetic coding had probably cackled in the face of normalcy upon conception, declaring, 'Methinks not, for thy fetus shall be chimera reborn!'—because the jury was still out on the radioactive spider theory. Unfortunately, coming to terms with her abilities only punctuated how utterly and certifiably insane she felt disguising them, which in itself was no small feat.

Fortunately, they were not a daily happenstance. But the knowledge that her mutant powers could rear its ugly head at any given moment, equal parts uncontrollable, frightening, and awkward when unleashed—not unlike her great uncle Emerson's bowels—did nothing for her mental health. Possessing no instruction, no conclusive inkling on how to control them was just the cherry on top of her metaphorical sundae of shitty bad luck.

This, however— _this!?_

This was a cruel twist of fate.

No, this was just a figment her twisted, insomnious brain had dredged up because if she had _just_ managed to go nearly eighteen years without once happening upon another magically gifted freak until _now_ , someone was going to get dragon-kicked into a pub toilet. Maybe it was because she hadn't slept in nearly 51 hours and her brainpower was severely reduced, but Liv was having difficulty registering this concept.

Or the fact that some wanker had just tried to bombast her with a strange, cerulean jolt of magic— _a goddamn spell_ , the better part of her brain corrected— _from a wand!_ Sadly, no amount of drunken impersonations in the mirror during her bi-annual Bruce Lee marathons could have prepared herself for that. Especially when she had launched herself off a pub stool, startled and terrified, and had fumbled for her bearings before tripping over her boots and somersaulting over a nearby table.

She wished, one day, to hopefully look back at that moment and laugh.

"Lass, come on out now. You've got nothin' to worry about."

Liv snorted. "Bugger off, Schmendrick."

She slapped her hands across her mouth, eyes expanding. _Shit_ , she thought. _Shit, aw shit!_ And sure enough, there was a moment of weighty silence, one wherein the barman's tread upon the crumbling cobblestone flooring halted.

Listening.

When his footfall gingerly crossed the pub in her direction, Liv swore, diving for her leather satchel, digging inside and searching like a madwoman for something to defend herself with. Cowering against the gum-speckled underside of a pub table, ass smarting like hell, was not her style. Neither was violence—she was a cynic, not a jackass—but she wasn't going down without a fight, no matter how unsavory the chances of being turned into a rabbit was.

"Aha!" Liv crowed to herself, then groaned. "Never mind. I'm fucked."

In her tremulous hands was the rolling pin she had purchased at the market the day before from a strange, bandy-legged peddler named Mundungus, which had been duly forgotten about in her bag until now. It was marbled with thick wooden handles, which promised to pack one glorious punch if she didn't get turned into a rodent beforehand.

A shadow fell across her line of sight. Her heart clenched. Slowly peering upwards, Liv met the wide, apprehensive eyes of Tom, the Leaky Cauldron's barman and innkeeper.

He was squat, balding, and middle-aged with a head that resembled a peach pit. He was friendly and obliging when she'd first walked through the doors, and politely didn't question why a five-foot-nothing witch with eyes that could light up hell itself, bedecked in several layers of flour, ordered a lager half past six in the morning.

Had the Amazing Levitating Tea Kettle Incident not left her nerves frayed, she may have been more observant of her surroundings than the desire to drown her misery in a pint of fermented hops when first entering the premises. So, she'd not been privy to the fact that the Leaky Cauldron was distinctly more than meets the eye in a very magical way.

Sitting on a stool, back to the empty pub with only a few distant, languid snores coming from the inn's occupants a floor above, Liv had not noted that the frames splaying the walls from floor to ceiling behind her beheld portraits that _moved_. That had peered owlishly at her and one another in wonder and bewilderment, and at various occasions animatedly flapped their hands to silence a gilded frame rendering the image of a troll with a bulbous nose from yawping with curiosity. Several of the enchanted paintings, mostly of famous Quidditch players, swooped from frame to frame in huddles, taking bets on how long it would take Tom to realize this girl was more than a new patron of the Leaky Cauldron, but a Muggle.

_It's like dinner and show_ , a mahogany-framed painting of a wizard wearing a burnt toque had thought, as Tom instantaneously became leery after asking five Sickles for the Dragon Scale lager, the girl resolutely replying with a heartfelt "Gesundheit". His waiting silence and slow dawning realization thus made her leery, so she'd pawed into her bag and produced an errant theater stub, a fuzzy lozenge, and an American buffalo nickel she kept for luck as payment.

"I can start a tab if ye'd like, poppet," Tom had said, inspecting the nickel with one hand, the other furtively snaking for his wand. "Maybe head to Gringotts. Keep a few Knuts on you for a rainy day."

Liv had made a face. _Knuts?_

"Gringotts? That, uh, sounds personal. Maybe a doctor should check that out."

The rest, they say, is history.

Or the present, because presently Liv was scrambling to her feet at the sudden, pronounced sight of the barman.

"Back off," Liv seethed. "Take another step and your dough- _knuts_ get flattened!"

Tom's face furrowed, wrinkling layer upon layer of skin until he looked like a living legume. Instinctively, his legs pressed together in an act to protect his private bits. He thrust a finger in her face, threats of violence to his jollies making him churlish.

"Now see here, missy, that's downright rude. You'd just startled me before, is all. I apologize. That was just a friendly curse–"

"A _curse_?"

Outraged, Liv brandished the rolling pin, holding it out before her like it was a two-handed broad sword. In this display of umbrage she managed to whack the wand out of the barkeep's outstretched hand. There was probably some fanciful French fencing name for such a maneuver, but to her chagrin, the handle of the rolling pin still had the price-tag attached, which fluttered to and fro like some booger clinging for life at the end of a nose.

Tom held up his hands in surrender.

"It only _binds_ you," he reasoned, eyes saucer-wide. "Didn't want you running amok 'n telling other Muggles what you've seen.

Magical tomfoolery was one thing, but gibberish just fanned the flames of Liv's infuriation. She clenched her teeth. Unconsciously she shifted her posture to reflect what his had been, holding her rolling pin aloft and readied, stance poised. Her eyes flickered to where his wand had clattered against a table leg, having no qualms stealing the blasted thing if it made her feel better and less like bumbling idiot who never received an quasi-sentient piece of wood.

On a completely unrelated note: Liv really wanted a wand.

"What the bloody hell is a Muggle?"

"You're a Muggle, dear," he nodded to her, which caused his jowls to wobble. "Non-magical folk."

Liv snorted. "That's completely back-asswards. Murphy's Law has been bitch-slapping me in the face for the past eighteen consecutive years with how non-magical I'm _not_."

"Oh." Tom blinked, then heaved a sigh. "Then you're not... Well, that changes things. Don't have to contact the Ministry after all. Grand! But it's clear you didn't go to Hogwarts, lass. Whomever taught you should be ruttin' ashamed of themselves, if you pardon my language."

Liv frowned— _Hogwarts?_ But the barman continued on, complete relief having washed over his face, shoulders relaxing, and he chatted on like he had not just accosted her with a magical stick.

"–nearly three decades later 'n I'm still a proud Hufflepuff. Best school on Merlin's green earth, if you ask me, especially with Dumbledore in charge."

"Never heard of him."

He choked. "P-pardon?"

" _Dumbledore_ ," Liv found herself snickering, not registering the expression of sheer indignity and incredulity warring on his face. "Brilliant. Sounds like something a role-playing, stringy-haired, pimple-assed twelve year old made up for himself after watching a Houdini documentary."

Tom gasped, affronted, before taking Liv by surprise and making a mad dash for his wand. He dove for it, the wooden apparatus skittering beneath his fingertips before grabbing hold and whipping it around.

" _Petrificus Totalus!_ " he shrieked, voice three octaves higher than normal.

And that's when things went awry.

—again.

Fortunately for Liv, her survival instincts flared within a millisecond, and dodged the spell's bolt by several inches. Besides a string of barbaric and lyrical sounding expletives in umpteen languages she had learned for such occasions, a swift sequence of thoughts burst forth into the forefront of her mind.

First: _I really should have taken Latin in school_ ; second: _Shit, not again_ ; third: _Run! Vámonos! Schnell, fräulein, schnell!_

Her last thought, however, resounded in her head like a forever-echo, which was the deep, perennial yearning to go home. Which was typically only reflected upon after slamming down several shots of Will's terrible, home-distilled moonshine.

Home.

Home, which was not the cramped flat she shared with Lucy. Not her cozy realm that was her kitchen in Cloverdilly Coffee. But _home_ , back when she was a mere child and her father had not vanished the day before she turned eleven, long before her mother had changed the locks to their manor when she was sixteen. Home, where there were roses of every color, hillsides dotted with houses and windmills, and a kitchen where she had once baked the best mince pie their cook had ever tasted.

Home, where she'd been safe in hiding her magic.

Catching how Tom the barman was working himself into another spell, however, Liv leapt in action, sweeping the rolling pin into the air. She had hoped to gain momentum in an effort to thoroughly thwack the wand out of his hand once again, but want clutched her heart at the last moment. The sheer, desperate need to go home compressed her fingers around the rolling pin's handle, the other pointing to the ground before her feet as she lost all propulsion to retaliate.

She closed her eyes, ten years old, and far away.

Suddenly, she couldn't breathe. Her lungs were being compressed, like there was no atmosphere in the room and she was being sucked into a great vacuum. Her ears popped painfully, eyeballs feeling like they were being pushed into her skull by two invisible thumbs, which opened to see the pub condensing rapidly into a sphere of shadows.

And with a ear-splitting _pop!_ , Olivia Charles folded into herself, disappearing within the blink of an eye.

There was a moment of breathless silence.

"Bloody hell," Tom said, bug-eyed in disbelief. "That Muggle girl just _Apparated_."

**(Three seconds later)**

Liv stumbled, feeling her vision warp into a tipsy-turvy, helter-skelter of colors. Which righted themselves the moment both of her boot-clad feet became rooted to the ground, an effect that resulted in a long procession of throbbing in her temples, eyes squinting like she'd just stared up at the sun for several moments.

Then she froze.

The distinct growl of an engine sent a shock into her bones, could feel it reverberate through the ground and up her legs, and she was startled to feel an encasing wave of heat from a churning motor nearby.

Too nearby.

She blinked, stunned, scared shitless to see that she stood within the center of a roadway. Freshly fallen snow glistened in the morning light, and the unmistakable profile of a large motorcycle careening straight for her filled her vision. At her sudden appearance, the rider had instantaneously braked, causing the bike to fishtail, tires screeching as they attempted to grip the asphalt beneath the blanket of snow.

"Oh shit," Liv said, and thought, _Historic last words, Charles—real eloquent_ , before the motorcycle was abruptly airborne. Tires fluttered her hair about, but did not once touch the unprotected head below.

Her heart stammered, staring wide-eyed at the now-empty roadway before her. A gust of exhaust pushed through her hair, in staccato with the rumbling engine effortlessly riding the air above. Adrenaline seized her nerves. Sheer disbelief making her breathless. And she tried her damn hardest not to focus on anything in particular.

"Levitating tea kettles," she breathed, hysterical laughter lodging in her throat and threatening to erupt. "And now levitating motorcycles? These are justifiable reasons to faint, right?"

And all went **black**.


	3. Caught in a Landslide

Consciousness came slowly to Olivia Charles. She was only vaguely aware that several thoughts were ricocheting around in her head with the velocity of a pinball machine on crack. Which was too bad, because if she currently possessed the cranial resources to translate them into something coherent, she'd know that her instincts were clamoring for her traumatized psyche to acknowledge that she was very much _not alone_.

"Ssshpongsh cik."

Everything felt like it was being pulled from quicksand. Or a vat of molasses. Still, her sense of hearing was able to analogue something deep and throaty nearby, rumbling. Laughter? The motorcycle?

_The motorcycle._

Liv's eyes snapped open.

"Sponge cake!" she yelled, arms flailing à la squid in attempt to sit upright.

Only to be pushed straight back down. The quiet rumbling commenced. No, it wasn't rumbling. It was snickering, masculine and amused, but disembodied when filtered through her cottony physical faculties.

"That's kind of you," a voice somewhere mused from above. "I'd love some, except if looks like you're wearing it."

Liv groaned in response, blearily opening an eye. She peered down, sighed, noting that all appendages were intact and moveable (arms, boobs, legs—check!), but merely splayed across a grassy, snow-tipped roadside knoll, far from the dangers of becoming roadkill. Her clothing was still dusted in flour from her all-night fracas of stress baking, which felt like an eon ago, but speckles of dough had dried onto her shirt like some congested asshole had a sneezing fit across her chest.

Muttering something unintelligible, Liv raised a hand to wipe away the dried-bogey bits of dough. Which felt like she was pulling against a bungee cord. Her arm shook, then gave out, effectively pummeling an unsuspecting boob instead.

"Oof!"

There was that snickering again.

"Well done, you hurt anywhere else? That was quite the fall you had before."

She wiggled a little. Her right breast was throbbing, sure, but no, nothing truly hurt. Nothing was amiss. Well, her bum still smarted from nose-diving over a table during her ordeal at the Leaky Cauldron, but that was an incident her brain would inevitably dredge up moments before falling asleep; as most brains become wicked organs of introspection, teeheeing like evil master _minds_ when revisiting every cringe-worthy, mortifying act committed before losing consciousness. For Liv, this lamentably involved all her humiliating memories involving wayward acts of magic.

This was just one out of a plethora of reasons why Olivia Charles was an insomniac.

And knew for a fact that she'd be agonizing for the next decade over having fainted. Beneath an aeronautical motorcycle. _After_ a bout of spontaneous teleporting.

Liv groaned again, and mumbled a groggy, "Just my sanity."

Rough fingers lightly touched her hand. They were warm against her cold skin, which caused it to instantly prickle. With a duality of wariness and weariness, Liv peeked one eye open, furtively turning her head to regard whomever was kneeling beside her.

She blinked.

And blinked again.

Owlish blinking aside, a reaction from Liv's strained and lethargic nerves causing her neurotransmitters to falter, she tensed. The sky above was a sheet of cloudless azure, so the morning sun rose behind their back uninhibited, rendering each feature nearly indistinguishable beneath a veil of shadow.

By this time Liv's short-circuiting brain had been hot-wired back into working order, running at a brisk 98%, as the smog her fainting spell had cast over her mind was clearing out with each breath. Crisp, fresh air filled her lungs, momentarily burning, but leaving behind a refreshing sensation to course within her veins and reawakening all her misanthropic charm.

As such, Liv clutched a handful of snowy grass and dirt. After the morning she had, she was resolutely not going to be bushwhacked twice. Nor was she above flinging bits of earth at an attacker whilst banshee shrieking in an act to throw down the proverbial gauntlet, as her rolling pin was nowhere in sight and enough was bloody _enough_.

But the person before her merely shifted, allowing peppy sunlight to whisk across their face.

Liv blinked.

_Whoa_ , the eloquent part of her mind surmised, as Liv's eyebrows shot up to her hairline.

But immediately scowled when noting that the man before her was smirking. Liv prided herself on being brutally frank during the best and worst of times, but there was a fundamental part of her that recoiled at the thought of sounding vapid because her first impression of him was being unreasonably attractive—and he seemed aware of the fact, with his lustrous black hair and grey eyes that crinkled the wider his smile became.

"Hello," he said. "Welcome back to the living."

Liv eyed him. "Are you insinuating I died?" she asked, one hand clutching earth, the other slowly flicking bits of dried dough off her shirt. "Kicked back with Satan? Because I definitely wasn't welcomed in God's bosom."

He snorted in response, eyes glimmering with something indiscernible, before his expression became serious. Leaning forward, gaze nearly akin to probing, the elegant arch to his brows furrowed just when Liv's deep-rooted cynicism flared and had the sudden inclination to rear back and finger-jab the look straight off his pretty face.

Her eyes inspected the rest of him posthaste, searching for anything distinctly like a wand.

Of the wooden variety, _not_ –

He touched her shoulder, stoppering Liv's train of thought.

"How do you feel?"

Liv deliberated. "Flummoxed," she replied, mashing her lips together for a moment. "Punchy. And hungry."

As it is when one verbalizes their feelings, the floodgates were unleashed, a melting pot of instincts and sentiments rushed to the forefront of Liv's mind like a tidal wave of emotional diarrhea. A chain reaction of all that had occurred within the past two hours careened through her head with a vengeance, leaving behind a sharp pulsating behind her eyes.

The levitating tea kettle. Will nearly espying this magical display. Taking a mental health day that was currently being bitchslapped by irony. Being accosted by a barman with a wand. Teleporting ( _teleporting!_ ). Almost becoming a pulpy pile of roadkill. Levitating motorcycles. Fainting. Attractive motorcyclists...

Liv released a long, windy sigh. She wearily ran a hand through her hair, not realizing that a lock from her bangs defied gravity as an effect, which caused the man before her to bite his lips from sniggering outright.

He must have seen the inner-turmoil creeping onto her face, however, because the expression of concern returned full tilt, and he shifted, reaching for something in his back trouser pocket. Liv stiffened, tightening her hold on her lumpy handful of earth, ready to clout and shout, and watched him with a hawkish eye.

"Here," he said, revealing a small, rectangular bar wrapped in aluminum, and tore off a corner.

"Chocolate?"

He broke off a generous portion and offered it. He nodded, causing hair to sweep into his eyes, which he brushed aside to display an encouraging smile.

"Course. Remedies the aftereffects of a lot of things—Dark magic, Dementors... Pettigrew's bean soup. C'mon, it's rejuvenating. You'll feel better," he said, smile turning lopsided. "I keep some on me in case a mate of mine runs out."

The words 'Dark magic' and 'Dementors' were not lost on Liv, but the earnestness on his face and the return of the indiscernible glimmer in his eyes sent her curiosity backpedaling to safer, skeptical waters.

Liv deadpanned, "I'm not taking candy from a stranger."

He looked as though he going to launch into an argument at first, but shrugged with a look that said _What, are you a twelve-year-old girl? Your loss, kid_ , before popping the sweetened confectionery morsel into his mouth.

The moments of silence thereafter gave both adequate time to study the other, and study Liv did. Scrutinized him. Sized him up. Ruminating whether his dark good-looks and charm was a front to some madman beneath; the last strange male she'd encountered had tried to paralyze her with a goddamn spell, so she was taking no chances. He couldn't have been much older than herself, however, and truth be told, she was no judge on sanity or trustworthiness since Liv was pathologically offish, thanks to her magical woes, and treated all with a blanket of dubiety. He seemed tall and particularly well-built although he was still kneeled beside her, an arm nonchalantly resting on a knee as he analyzed her in return.

His fingers twirled the remainder of the wrapped chocolate bar in his hands, grey eyes narrowing onto hers in deep, pensive thought. They looked almost silver, she noted offhandedly, as a beam of sunlight ran across his face.

Liv glowered. His expression was beginning to morph from speculation to utter absorption, the glimmer in his eyes becoming something akin to roguish. Warning bells rang in her head, and broke the silence with the first scathing remark on the tip of her tongue.

"So you're the git that almost ran me over with a motorcycle."

He choked on the mouthful of chocolate, but recovered quickly and returned the glower.

"Compared to you," he countered, swallowing. "who Apparated right in front of one."

"I have no idea what that means," Liv replied honestly, but he must have mistaken this for facetiousness, because he snorted.

"Need me to spell it out for you?"

"Sure," she chirped.

He hesitated, eyeing her. Liv nearly grinned, knowing that the gears in his head were turning, trying to decipher whether she was being sincere or not.

"I'm serious," she continued. "Define 'Apparated', because I have no idea what you're talking about."

His eyes flickered to each of hers, pondering something. Biting his lip, he leaned forward an inch, coming to some conclusion that furrowed his brows. Slowly, he reached forward, fingertips almost touching her left temple before he thought better of it; he smelled faintly of motor oil comingled with something woodsy and familiar, like a fusion of cedar and vanilla.

"I think you might be concussed. No worries, another mate of mine has had his brains scrambled more times than he can count," he remarked, then snorted. "Quidditch players. Can you tell me what year it is? Who's the current Minister of Magic?"

"Minister of _what_?" Liv's heart nearly imploded.

There was a political official, an appointed head of authority over magic? Over people, _just like her_ , who possessed magical, occult powers? Nearly eighteen years of tiptoeing around her blighted abilities, alone and untrained, only to unearth this little scripture that there existed an established _government_ for such, sent her mind scuttling about and ready to combust out of sheer outrage.

Three incessant thoughts revolved within Liv's head, gaining momentum as she tried to grapple with this revelation. First: _Shit! How many of us are out there?_ ; second: _Is Gandalf real?_ ; third: _I need to punch a tree_.

And just like that, another small piece of her world came crumbling down. Fitting, because now her brain felt like it was falling away like pieces of wet cake.

"No slurred speech. Pupils are dilating..."

Liv's eyes snapped onto the man before her, who seemed wholly unaware of her inner identity-crisis as he continued his examination. When he reached for her again, Liv violently flapped a hand at him.

"I'm _fine_ ," she groused, then thrust a finger in his face. "If you attempt that 'how many fingers am I holding up' shtick I'm going to shove a rolling pin up your ass."

He slowly held up two fingers. "How many?"

Liv blinked at him, then surprised herself by laughing.

"Alright, where'd it go?" Liv around the hillside for the rolling pin, then pointed at him again. " _You_ —bend over."

A full-scale grin spread across his face at that, and Liv distinctly ignored how his eyes crinkled as he gave an appreciative laugh. He held a hand out to her.

"Sirius," he said, grin becoming jaunty and crooked. "Black."

"Olivia. I don't trust you to divulge a surname."

His hand encased her own, skin still warm. He gave hers a rough shake and released a bark-like laugh.

"Fair enough," he shrugged, then cocked his head to the side, eyes narrowing. "You're going to be troublesome, aren't you?"

"Believe it or not, but that was the very first thing my mum ever said to me," Liv replied matter-of-factly.

He laughed again, leaning back as she eased herself into a sitting position. In Liv's periphery, it didn't go amiss that he immediately resumed his analysis of her, and under his watchful eye she took stock their surroundings.

It was a facade, more than anything else, as Liv found herself embattled with the keenness to know what thoughts were ruminating in his head, more so than the ones that were still squawking for attention in her own after the recent discovery of magical ministers. Something about Sirius Black, within the past several minutes, pushed the words 'cavalier' and 'loose canon' to the forefront of her mind, which made him rather difficult to read.

Which made Liv shrug. A self-proclaimed misanthrope with a penchant for bouts of uncontrolled magic, she had never been a people-person, and profiling them had never felt satisfying or particularly stimulating. She'd rather hermit herself away in Cloverdilly Coffee's kitchen with the intent to fatten people up, take their money, than spend twenty seconds of her life conversing with them.

People? Ew. Doughnuts? Good.

_Hello_ , priorities.

So with that, Liv sighed and rubbed her eyes tiredly, trying to ward away the piqued interest, the momentary lapse in judgement, and the heaviness of Sirius Black's stare, before peering around. Surprise straightened her spine, however, eyes widening over the scenic view before her.

"Dorothy, you aren't in Kansas anymore," she muttered softly.

The roadway was several yards in front of them, which split vibrant, undulating green hills in two. Craning her head around, Liv saw hillsides sloping off into the far distant horizon. Serene, country noise filled the air—which involved birdsong and the occasional bleating of sheep and the whispers and weaves of the wind's current through tall grass. Hedgerows fenced in fields, which were sectioned off by knee-high stone walls covered in gorse.

A large motorcycle was parked by the roadside, dark and looming in the sunlit, rustic atmosphere. Next to the rear tire Liv instantly detected her rolling pin and leather bag; a few of its contents were littered about, like it had been tossed aside in a hurry.

Nearby, she was being supervised by a cow chewing its cud.

It mooed curiously when their eyes met.

A shadow fell across her lap, Sirius having shifted. Her eyes latched onto him, watching as he returned the wrapped chocolate bar and withdrawing something else in its stead.

Upon seeing what, Liv garbled something incoherently.

" _What!_ " she said hotly. "Where are you guys getting _those_?"

Sirius frowned. "Pardon?"

Liv pointed at his hand, which gripped a long, black polished wand. Up close, it was evidently something that had been masterfully crafted, as a complicated rendering of arcane symbols had been etched into the shaft, all of which had been slightly twisted to its tip. Unlike Tom the Leaky Cauldron's barman and innkeeper, this wand had no hand-grip, nor was it as springy with movement.

Liv flared with envy. As did her nostrils.

"If I have to join a cult to get one, I will. I'm not above bathing in the blood of goats, naked and cold and mildly confused, if that's what it takes."

She continued on, but resorting back to incoherent garbling, eyeing the wand and clutching her hands together to keep from snatching it out of his.

"Are you having some sort of fit?" Sirius laughed, raising a brow quizzically. "Oh. A wand? You don't have–"

" _No_."

This knocked the confused expression straight of his face. For a millisecond, something inscrutable registered on his features, but he schooled it off as his gaze slowly roamed from her dark eyes to eyebrows, to her nose, her lips, flitting down to her hands, across her jacket and tattered jeans, until, finally, settling once more on her eyes. The intensity of this skein of inspection caught Liv off guard, and had silenced her immediately, face flushing a theatrical rosy hue with each passing second, too tense to realize she should be leery.

Then, he sighed.

"You're a Muggle, aren't you? There's always some _thing_."

Liv glowered, disregarding the last half. "I'm not...non-magical, if that's what you're asking."

"But you don't have a wand," Sirius said flatly.

For reasons unbeknownst to her, Liv felt the heated rush to explain herself. She crossed her legs, twisting on her bum to give him her undivided attention. Raking a hand through her hair, Liv tried to her damn hardest to settle her nerves, knowing well enough what that wand in his hands was capable of. Being attacked by a middle-aged barman with a walnut for a face was one thing, but Liv had a gut-feeling it was a whole other to see it firsthand from Sirius Black.

The thought sent a chill down her spine. Which was a strange sensation, and if she wasn't in the midst of an existential debate, she may have acknowledged it in light of her refusal to be cowed by intimidation.

"I had no idea more–" she feverishly gestured to herself and the air between them. "–existed until twenty minutes ago!"

The exasperation, the naked desperation, on her face must have seemed genuine to him, because Sirius didn't question it. Instead, he frowned, puzzled.

"Let me get this straight," he began, voice deep with inquiry. "You're magically... _inclined_ , but...have been hiding it?"

"Yes," Liv nodded.

"And you've never been educated?"

"Nope."

"How is that possible? They keep tabs of every magical birth, and you can't be more than sixteen."

"I'll be eighteen in a few days."

Sirius was quiet at that, mulling on this information. His grey eyes flicked to hers several times, speculative, biting his lip like he didn't know what verdict he should come to. Then he exhaled heavily through his mouth, shaking his head. "Sod it," he concluded. "That's too hard to wrap my head around. And I thought _I_ once had it bad."

Liv groaned in response, head dropping, pushing the palms of her hands into each eye. The dull throbbing behind her eyes intensified, but at least it was a pain she was unleashing on herself; that she could deal with.

"Life's dealt me a hand of cards that I have absolutely no idea how to play," she lamented.

Something knocked gently against her shoulder.

"Hey. Cheer up," he encouraged. "Look on the bright side. You're not alone anymore."

Peering up between her fingers, Liv scowled at the him, noting how a faint, light-hearted smile had appeared on his face, all traces of contemplation gone. Once their gazes met, the smile grew and hoisted up on one side, eyes lit with that roguish glimmer Liv did not trust one iota.

"Excuse me?"

"You possess the ability to perform magic, so what? I do too. And so does hundreds upon thousands all around the world," Sirius explained, then swept his arms out, gesturing to the encompassing countryside with a wide, incorrigible smile. "Welcome to wizardkind! Need a tour?"

Liv sighed. "I need to get home."

She had no inkling how long she'd been unconscious. Actually, she had no inkling if she was still in the same _country_ , much less what time it was. The sun was still ascending the cloudless skyline, however, so it was still early in the morning wherever she was.

Fatigue swept over Liv like a tsunami, seeping into her veins as the waters stilled. It felt like she hadn't slept in days, which was accurate. She hadn't. Her limbs pulsated lethargically, like her blood within each appendage was being slowly churned. This wasn't the first time she had pushed over 48 hours without sleep, but it was the first time she'd had been forced through several thoroughly traumatizing (i.e. _magical_ ) enterprises without having adequately rested brainpower to deal with such.

Sirius was eyeing her cryptically again. "Which is where?"

"London."

His eyebrows spiked. "Really? Impressive, you Apparated miles away. Hundreds, actually. No worries, I was on my way to a mate's place. House-sitting while his parents are on holiday and he's spending the weekend flat shopping with his fiancé," he continued, standing up and dusting snow off his trousers, tucking away the wand. "We'll figure out how to get you home from there. It's bloody freezing out and you look like you've snogged a Dementor. No offense."

He waited a beat.

"You don't know what a Dementor is, do you?"

"Nope."

"Noted. I'll explain later."

Liv raised a brow. "I shouldn't be snogging them, I take it?"

" _No_." His deep laugh was infectious, causing her to nearly grin in response. He saw this, smile turning knavish as he offered her a hand up. "Trust me. Just don't. I'm sure many men in London would be very put out from such a loss."

Liv snorted. "You haven't met my friend Lucy."

Grabbing his hand, Liv didn't have to use an ounce of strength to haul herself upright. He did it all, pulling her forward with a careful tug, grip firm and warm, with all the ease of closing a door. Which didn't say much, considering Olivia Charles was undeniably petite— _space efficient_ , she'd argue, because the word 'petite' was for floral-loving grannies and people who had difficulty describing pygmy shrews—and thanks to being genetically predisposed with a high metabolism, she remained physically unaffected by all her skillful baking.

Sirius, however, never had a chance to respond.

Apparating was a new experience for her, and now that her booted feet stood on solid ground, her entrails were making it known they were _not_ a fan. They felt like scrambled eggs, beat into submission by a six foot whisk of death and cooked on Satan's stove-top until they resembled shriveled, sun-baked ants that wanted to crawl out of her esophagus in a mad dash for freedom.

"Uh oh," Liv cheeped, clutching her stomach.

Sirius eyed her. "What's wrong?"

"Uh, my insides have liquefied?"

Again, Sirius never had a chance to respond, because a second later Liv found herself lurching forward, crab-walking in a frenzy to dry heave into a nearby shrubbery. The cow that had been watching this exchange jerked in surprise, only to trundle off with a low, derisive moo.

Liv retched air for a moment or two, arms trembling as she held her hair away, legs quavering, and even each of her ribs felt the side-effects of Apparating, tremors rippling from deep inside her stomach and constricting each muscle around it. She was only vaguely aware that Sirius had stepped closer in her periphery, but giving her enough room without infringing upon her pride.

"First time, huh?" he asked, shoving hands into his trouser pockets, then reiterated: "Apparating? That's normal, the nausea should go away next time."

"If there's ever a next time," Liv's voice shook humorlessly. "I'm Apparating in a goddamn insane asylum."

He barked a surprised laugh, and she could nearly feel his eyes glimmering over with amusement.

"And taking you with me!" she snapped.

Once she was composed enough to stand upright, Liv whisked a hand across her face, rejoicing in how her stomach was settling without trying to dislodge itself. Turning, she saw that Sirius had taken several steps away, grabbing something off the ground where they had been previously seated.

It was a jacket, leather and well-worn, lying crumpled as a makeshift pillow where her head had rested. He gave it a hard shake, snow and dirt falling away, before swinging it over his shoulders in an effortless motion.

Her stomach clenched again.

_Oh_ , she thought.

He cocked his head in her direction. "Better?"

"As good as I'll ever be."

"That's the spirit," he replied, and turned away.

He loped down the hill without a backward glance, and it didn't go unnoticed that, yes, she was right, Sirius Black was tall and well-built, moving with a gracefulness she'd never be able to pull off. His attractiveness had probably made him overtly confident and charismatic long ago, but there was something taut about his movement, even when they'd been sitting. The way he caught her glances and seemed vigilantly aware of his surroundings, the way his expressions changed with his thoughts, that read something intrinsically _different_ was lying beneath. Possibly something dark.

Something that was currently pricking at the skin on her arms.

It took Liv a moment to reach him, stopping a handful of feet away from the motorcycle, retrieving her bag and tucking the rolling pin inside.

He gestured to it. "Hop on."

"Hop on?" she raised an incredulous brow.

"Extend one foot over the seat–"

"I know what you meant," Liv retorted. "I was displaying suspicion, not stupidity. I'm not getting on that."

"Why not?"

She rooted her boots to the roadside. "I'll make it a levitating deathtrap. Again. Like I did before, you know, before I...uh, passed out."

He smirked, knocking the kickstand up. "Fainted like a damsel in distress, you mean?"

" _No_."

"And that wasn't you," he continued, fluidly seating himself on the motorcycle, which Liv refused to acknowledge because it was stupid how good he looked doing so. He pointed a finger towards her. "I'll take credit of levitating my own motor vehicle, I thank you." He was quiet a moment, "That is the second strangest thing I've ever said."

Liv fought a smile. "You must be proud."

His smirk grew, and gestured behind. "Quit flapping your gums and just get _on_."

" _Fine_ ," she snapped, stepping forward. "Damn, you're bossy."

Sirius Black laughed once more, revving up the motorcycle once Liv settled herself on the pillion behind him, lightly snaking her arms around his stomach. His laugh, bark-like with unrestrained amusement, rumbled into her chest, before they sprung forward and causing her grip around him to tighten.

"Be thankful you've never met my mother," he replied.

— — —

A half-hour into their ride, Sirius broke the silence that had settled between them. By now Liv had become used to the engine and pistons churning beneath her, chest warm from being pressed against a solid, leather-clad back. Twice now she had attempted to lean back, only for him to rev the engine and accelerate before she was sent scrambling forward.

 _Self-assured git_ , she'd thought to herself after this had first occurred.

The second time, however, Liv pinched him smartly through the jacket. He responded by spurring twice as fast, and snickered outright when she shrieked in surprise.

The scenic countryside had yet to waver into anything else, and the breathtaking panorama of nature refreshed her stress-addled senses. Fresh air, tinted with wafts of flora, gradually cleansed how utterly spent she'd felt prior to the motorcycle ride, and even she was willing to admit the leather jacket added a heady element that was comforting.

"So," Sirius began, slowing to navigate a cliffside bend overlooking a river. "You going to tell me, or is it some nationally guarded secret?"

"Huh?"

"Your last name," he said. "You trust me enough to take you to some undisclosed location, but not enough to tell me that?"

Liv mused momentarily, which caused him to slightly turn his head, glancing at her out of his periphery. His hair whisked into her face, tickling her nose, which she furiously flapped out of the way before answering.

"It's Charles."

"Charles," he repeated slowly, like he was testing it out. "Mate of mine once had a pet toad named Charles."

"Nice?"

"Yeah," he chuckled, which she felt more through her arms and chest than heard. "Transfigured it into a foot stool when I was twelve. Get it? Toadstool?"

Although he couldn't see, Olivia Charles smiled. Genuinely, for the first time in a long time, feeling it spread across her face in a fury of heartwarming sincerity, so much that it almost hurt. Biting her lip to keep this abrupt surge of joy from becoming overpowering, Liv settled her forehead against his back, reveling in this sensation, ruminating on how utterly strange and precious it felt.

This not aloneness.

"I once turned a toddler's boogers into honeybees as he ate them," she offered, voice quiet.

But he heard her, barking out a laugh as infectious as every other. " _Brilliant_."


	4. And a Dash of Death

"My posse, uh, call me Rex."

"Why is that?"

"Because," came the slumberous reply. "I'm a _small arms_ dealer."

Not fifteen minutes prior, turning off onto the woodland lane leading to the Potter's cottage at breakneck speed, the brain residing within Olivia Charles' cranium decided to give the proverbial farewell salute to consciousness. Punctually, she turned into a heap of dead weight on the back of Sirius Black's motorcycle. This, of course, was problematic for her health, which resulted with Sirius peppering the country air with a slew of illuminative profanities whilst floundering to grapple a hold her—thusly saving Liv from becoming a pulpy mess of road kill for the second time that day.

"I really hope this isn't a habit of yours," he had muttered, juggling Liv so that her face was squashed against his back without so much as a millimeter to move. "Steady on, we're almost there."

The responding snort, muffled by his leather jacket, quirked the corners of his lips.

All this was fair trade as far as Sirius Black was concerned. Because in lieu of everything that had occurred, namely that Liv's traumatized mind was still on the fritz when unconscious, she immediately launched into the wild throes of sleep-talking that had him sniggering in ways he hadn't since his Hogwarts years.

Which was a feat within itself, considering his best mate was James ' _Let's-Jinx-Moony's-Books-To-Moan-Ohhh-Yes-That's-The-Ticket-Every-Time-He-Turns-A-Page_ ' Potter.

Presently, Olivia Charles was burrowed in a highland of quilts and afghans. Euphemia refused to change his bedroom at the Potter Cottage into the cozy, summer-toned guestroom it had once been before he'd moved in at sixteen, the bed perpetually made in case he had the slightest inclination to use it. He still had a few knickknacks about, which remained unmoved but dustless after all these years, and all his Gryffindor banners and photographs were still adhered tightly to cover as much of the peach damask wallpaper as possible.

Seeing his bedroom untouched had stopped him in his tracks and plucked at heartstrings Sirius didn't know he had. The later was squelched, however, when Liv wiggled with a little too much vigor in his arms when attempting to lie her down with care. His attempt was futile, considering she unconsciously thwacked him straight up the nose.

" _Oof_ ," he grunted, then: "Alright, no chivalry for you."

And unceremoniously dropped her onto the bed.

Her sleep remained fitful, squirming so that she encased herself deeper and deeper into the blankets until she'd managed to form a molehill out of yarn and twill, dark bangs ensconcing her face so that naught but her nose stuck out. Voice soft and warbled as she spoke, the girl looked nothing more than a small, snarky mouse capable of speech. Peter would be beside himself with fits of jealousy.

Sirius, for his part, watched over her rather vigilantly, letting his curiosity amass and his thoughts to venture legions upon legions away. He had meant to initially give her privacy as she slept off whatever hellish trauma she'd experience before her accidental Apparating, because the dark circles beneath her eyes looked like she'd been previously three sheets to the wind before going ten rounds with Peeves.

But then he heard his named exhaled amongst her ridiculous sweet nothings as he turned for the door. Halting, waiting, curiosity intensifying with each passing moment, Sirius Black found himself holding his breath—which was good, because his nose still smarted like hell.

In iconic Liv fashion, however, her next words were: "You're pretty, but _the chocolate_. What if it melts? They'll think it's _poop_."

This cemented his decision to stay and catch the show.

He was now leaning against the wall opposite his bed, leg propped up and gnawing on one of several leather bands wrapped around his wrist, a habit born from introspection. His mind churned. Gained momentum, revolving around what in Godric's name he was supposed to do with a cute, pint-sized Muggle-but-not-Muggle girl bedecked in flour, wielding a rolling pin, and sleeping in his bed.

He snorted.

It was almost like sixth year all over again.

Liv had grown silent, breaths becoming long and airy. At one point she grunted, mashing a hand across her face and whisking her bangs aside, before turning her face into his pillow. Sirius nearly cracked a smiled. The shadows from her lashes left a feathery silhouette against her cheekbones, lips pressing together as though she was about to speak once more. Sirius found himself leaning forward intently, lips already beginning to twitch.

"You _dog_."

Sirius vaulted from the wall in surprise. Or jumped. Flounced. Gamboled like a blitzed pixie, heart nearly catapulting up and out of his esophagus before his boots skidded to a halt. Glancing to make sure the girl was still sound asleep, he whipped his head towards the fireplace.

Grabbing the closest object nearby—an unopened chocolate frog box—he chucked it to his right.

"Merlin's dimpled _arse_ , James," he breathed, unable to keep from laughing.

James Potter stood within his bedroom's fireplace, having just appeared via Floo powder, a brow having already made the ascent towards his hairline as his eyes pointedly flitted from Sirius to the unconscious girl in his bed and back again. This cycle repeated itself thrice. It took several seconds, but soon a sly, artless grin upturned his lips.

James waggled his brows suggestively.

A wide smile spread across Sirius' face. "Stop speculating," he said, pointing a finger at him. "You've caught me in worse scenarios."

In one hand James held a small paper bag. The other, a scone, which he gnawed upon as Sirius introspectively volleyed between looking unabashed or unamused. He settled for his usual flare of indifference, leaning against a wardrobe as James flicked crumbs off his jumper, who peered over at the girl before catching his gaze.

"Yeah? Probably. Name three."

Sirius raised a brow at the challenge, but found himself secretly pleased. Unbeknownst to many, Sirius Black liked things in threes. Call it genetic predisposition, conditioning, or spending too much time with the overtly meticulous, borderline compulsive Remus Lupin. Three. Three battered Sickles in his pocket he kept for luck. Three firewhiskies at the Three Broomsticks. Three best mates.

Three embattled thoughts grappling for his attention, all prominent and contrasting.

The first was untethered curiosity. The second featured Olivia Charles, who had not only just rolled over in her sleep, but was currently nuzzling her way under the pillow so that no part of her was visible. The third was elicited by James and the smarmy grin that was begging to be jabbed off by one of his broomsticks. Which could be done. And easily, considering he'd stolen one years before, and knew it was currently accumulating dust beneath his bed.

None of these, however, Sirius felt particularly keen to address.

Instead, he raked a hand through his hair in vain attempt to corral his thoughts, emitting a half-hearted laughed. "I'd rather explain."

"Famous last words," James snorted. "It's safer to speculate. I'm afraid what the truth of–" he gestured towards the girl with the scone, "–is."

Sirius glanced at Liv before shrugging. "There's a perfectly logical reason behind this."

"Okay, _Moony_."

"She Apparated right in front me, _Prongs_."

He shoved a hand into a trouser pocket. The other he hooked a thumb underneath a leather band as his mind's eye flashed through the sequence of events from earlier that morning—tires screeching, snowflakes settling atop unmoving eyelashes, fear. Dark eyes. The scent of chocolate and wind. Witty lips. Distrust. Small hands.

Confusion. Surprise. Laughter.

James frowned. "So?"

"While I was on the bike."

They both fell silent, looking over at the small mound of blankets that cocooned Liv. Sirius brought the leather bands up to his lips. James exhaled heavily before popping the last morsel of scone into his mouth, nodding to his bed.

"Is she alright?"

"Yeah, missed her by an inch," Sirius shrugged again, noncommittal. "Fell asleep on the way back."

While James Potter was insatiable in terms of curiosity, Sirius Black leveled the playing field with his affinity for trouble, so Sirius hoped beyond all means that James wouldn't ask why Liv didn't simply Apparate back. He wasn't ready for a floodgate of inquiries to unleash, especially since the one possessing all the answers to his own questions was currently chattering unintelligibly in her sleep.

"Well, don't tell Mum," James said, readjusting his glasses. "She'll give you that stern 'I told you someone was bound to get hurt on that thing' and waggle her finger at you. It's intimidating. And you'll be weeding the garden for weeks."

Sirius snorted and opened his mouth to reply when Liv squirmed out from beneath his pillow, hair in vast disarray. Her hands curled into small fists around the edge of a quilt, pink lips pressing into an angry line.

"Harold, what did I tell you about shatting in the serpent king's cereal?" she divulged in a conspiratorial whisper. "Now war has been declared. Good _day_ , sir."

A second later saw Liv squirming back under the pillow, the blankets rising and falling in silence. Sirius' lips twitched. James leaned towards him, suppressing laughter.

"Who's Harold?"

"Good question."

James studied her for several seconds, then did the same to Sirius, before muttering, "Only you, Padfoot."

Sirius snickered under his breath before a wave of exhaustion nearly blindsided him. It had been a long night, an interesting morning which was far from over, and so he tiredly ran a hand through his hair before kicking off his boots. They sailed across the room and thumped against a half-empty bookcase with two loud thuds. He winced and glanced at Liv, whose response, thankfully, was only a muffling of the word 'kumquat'.

He shot a look at James, who was busy inspecting the box of chocolate frogs launched at him from earlier.

"Flat hunting going that poorly?" he asked, shrugging out of his leather jacket and tossing it towards his best mate, winking. "Or did you just miss me?"

James smirked and tossed the box onto the night stand to bat aside the jacket. "London is expensive, much to Lily's joy. She hates living in any place with the population over twenty. I think she was a woodland hermit in a past life."

"Of course she hates it," Sirius replied darkly. "Grimmauld Place is there. Blasted house taints everything."

"I know, mate. I agree. But she caught wind of a small village to the north that we're going to check out tomorrow. Going to stay at the Cauldron tonight. Apparently Tom was attacked by a Muggle this morning, so I'm going to wheedle the full story out of him. How come all the fun stuff happens when we're not around? I miss Hogwarts."

James sighed nostalgically, before tossing the bag in his hand at Sirius. It was paper and small, with the shoddy rendering of a clover stamped in black ink on the side.

"What's this?"

"Try 'em."

Sirius peered inside, where two scones were nestled neatly within. The saccharine aroma of almonds wafted upwards, causing his mouth to immediately water. He barked a laugh.

"You brought me baked goods?"

James clapped his hands in mock enthusiasm. "And not just any baked goods," he crowed. "But those kneaded by the skilled, loving hands of a Death Eater!"

Sirius' breath hitched. Dead weight settled in the pit of his stomach. His fists clenched, knuckles bloodless.

"What?"

"We tried out a new coffee shop. Cloverhill Dilly... something," James explained, now somber, folding his arms across his chest. "Sirius, the barista is a Death Eater."

Sirius glanced down at Liv, his thoughts eerily calm despite the dread lodged in his gut. His brash nature typically had him acting first and thinking later, because he hated nothing more in the world than The Dark Lord's followers, but now that the dead weight of such a revelation was slowly ebbing away, it left behind a whole new exhaustion that kept his blood from running hot.

After the strange twist of events with Olivia Charles and the motorcycle just hours before now felt like an eon ago. The dark days of Lord Voldemort's rebellion had felt like a veil of shadow settling over his life where his mother's tyranny hadn't touched, snuffing out the good. It was foolish of him to think he'd go through an entire day without hearing about the war. It was selfish. Still, he had enjoyed conversing with someone who knew nothing of pure-blood supremacy or killing curses. Maybe that's what was captivating about a Muggle-but-not-a-Muggle, wisecracking girl.

Sirius inhaled deeply.

"How do you know?" he asked, eyes roaming across James' face. "For certain, I mean."

"It was there, Sirius, clear as day," James replied, pushing the bridge of his glasses up. "He was a large, muscled, tattooed bloke, but it was there. The Dark Mark. Peter said he was dropping by this morning, so I thought he could scope out the place considering his unbinding love of pastries."

"That's it? Reconnaissance? I trust Pettigrew with my life, but..." Sirius frowned, tossing the paper bag into a rubbish bin with distaste. "Dumbledore should be notified."

James faltered, hesitant. "Not yet. I want to wait and see with this one. There's something... _strange_ about him. Something off. I want to find out what before he's involved."

Sirius glanced over at Liv, who had shifted quietly in her sleep.

"Did you get his name?"

"Will," James said. "William Eames."


	5. Dawn Take You All

There's something to be said about resiliency. Call it genetic predisposition, the will to survive, or the time-hardened ability to bourgeon the weight of the world on one's shoulder whilst taking a metaphorical beating to the head like no other and coming out relatively unscathed.

It was with this train of thought that Olivia Charles suppressed the urge to salute herself.

After all, it wasn't every day that one wakes up from a deep, cathartic slumber in a foreign bedroom to the largest eagle owl known to mankind staring down its beak at you in a manner that read, 'I hope you slept well, human, because you won't last here another minute.'

Liv stared, currently nose-to-beak with the voluminous bird of prey, having opened her eyes just moments before. Somewhere, in the great beyond, Fate was sipping cognac and cackling with glee.

The owl chirped. Or croaked, as it was a deep sound that reeked of ill intent.

Liv blinked drowsily. Then, with an air of complete detachment, she sighed, turning her face into the pillow until it was smothered entirely. When she spoke, her words were both distorted and unleashed with great frustration.

" _Isth aye eeps ittin wurder 'n wurder_ ," she groaned.

Translation:

"This day keeps getting weirder and weirder. _Ugh_."

She was still not quite free from the thralls of sleep, so her senses were rather spacey, and immediately focused on how blissfully soft and downy and _safe_ the pillow felt rather than the fact some portly bird was currently attempting to initiate a staring contest of doom. It smelled of lavender and the faint, heady scent of whomever owned it. For the absurd amount of blankets she was currently enveloped within, Liv felt neither too hot nor too cold, but a perfect level of warmth she loathed to leave.

However long she had slept, Liv had slept deeply and on a metaphysical level, allowing her brain to function at a healthier rate. And it was because of this that she felt rather unflappable about everything that had been volleyed at her, or that fact that she was snuggled down in a stranger's bed, in a stranger's home, in a land that could be Narnia for all she knew.

The owl made the later point something for Liv to ponder, and she side-eyed it warily. It cocked its head in return.

It was safe to say that Olivia Charles had been lobbed from one surreal, mind-boggling mishap after another, like Fate was done sipping its cognac of evil and invited Bad Luck over for a game of 'hot potato', but instead of a potato it was her life, and so down the metaphoric rabbit hole she went. Still, she was _drawing the_ _line_ at having tea with Mr. Tumnus.

The whirlwind of events aside, when and where she lost consciousness was a muddled, gray mystery no matter how much she probed her memory. It had probably been a cringe-worthy feat, considering nothing she did was half-assed or subtle and Murphy's Law ambled after her like some ravenous leacher, so Liv was not particularly inclined to delve further into whatever humiliating acts she'd unconsciously committed. Hopefully it didn't involve drool.

What she did remember involved sun-warmed leather pressed against her face, wind trilling in her ears. The rev of an engine growling amiably beneath her. A strange, otherworldly feeling of empathy. Birdsong along a woodland pathway. Sirius Black's bark of laughter.

The tantalizing wonderment of what it would feel like to possess a _wand_.

A string of clicking sounds ( _tck-tck-tck_ ) pulled Liv out of her dazed and contemplative state. She opened an eye. The eagle owl was now perched atop the bed's ivy-etched headboard, peering down at her with its head rotated in an unnatural angle that did absolutely nothing for Liv's mental health. It stared, moments passing, orange eyes large and orbicular and glinting when it should be blinking. It clicked its beat, once, at her.

"You're a ruddy little creeper, aren't you?"

_Tck?_

Her eyes narrowed. "You woke me up," she said, voice flat. "We're not friends."

Feathers bristling around its neck, the owl unfurled its wings. It beat them wildly in obvious protest, ceasing mid-hoot when Liv thrust a finger at it.

"You poop on me," she warned. "Be advised that I know an excellent hot wing recipe."

The owl bobbed its head again, although now Liv was envisioning the bird was jiving to Wagner's _Ride of the Valkyries_ before it went for the kill. Instead, it paced along the headboard, talons ticking against the wood in a manner that said it found her threat particularly laughable.

"By _heart_."

Emitting a shrill raptor screech, the eagle owl took flight, landing atop the mantle of a small cobbled fireplace on the opposite side of the bedroom. Liv then received the full weight of its stink eye. Another sequence of low clicks of its beak confirmed that she, indeed, had not made a friend.

Liv felt a twinge of guilt. Her brain had long ago been pre-programmed to run on baker's hours because she was, in fact, _a baker_ , but all her salty idiosyncrasies and defense mechanisms had the tendency of flaring like wild fire until tamed by caffeine.

"I hurt an owl's feelings," she breathed. "I'm a terrible person. Wait! Holy _balls_ –"

Abruptly, the owl had become airborne. Without quite meaning to, Liv squeaked in surprise, especially when the bird zeroed in straight towards her, plumage an aesthetic array of velvety browns and creamy silvers beneath freckles of gold. Its ear tufts looked like imposing, furrowed eyebrows over its wickedly glinting owl eyes _and_ –

It dropped a piece of parchment on her lap.

Liv didn't dare move for precisely three seconds, before her tenacity did a sharp 180-degree turn and she openly glowered at the bird.

" _Touché_ , ya overgrown pigeon. Consider us even?"

The owl commenced to hop about the bed, talons digging into the quilt before launching itself an inch into the air. The bird had probably never missed a meal in its life, therefore the act was terribly adorable; something hummed within Liv's chest. She also took this as a sign of agreement, a smile lifting one corner of her lips before plucking the parchment from her lap.

Sharp, looping scrawl met her eyes, like the writer was trying to write legibly but was too impatient to fully commit.

\- oOo -

_Olivia,_

_I'm guessing no one's mentioned to you the dangers of falling asleep astride a motorcycle? Or that you're much heavier than you look? I might have ruptured a disc carrying you inside._

_Joking! Don't hit me. You seem prone to violence and I'm delicate._

_Follow the owl. He'll lead you down to the kitchen; I'm pretty sure you're starving. I'll meet you there._

_-S_

_P.S. The owl's name is Isthmus. There should be a canister of Eeylops owl treats on the night stand. Give him one—he'll screech at you if you don't. Give him two and he'll claw at you until he's eaten them all. Greedy bastard._

\- oOo -

Without realizing it, the smile had branched out to the other corner of Liv's lips, and before she could acknowledge the upturn, something sharp pierced her left hand. Another flash in her periphery had her locking gazes with the owl. It froze, clearly having been gearing up to peck her hand again, feathers bristled, stubby legs ready to launch in attack.

"Ouch! I thought we'd come to an _impasse_."

Isthmus shrieked, a terrible sound that had Liv gnashing her teeth because of the proximity. Then it hopped. Then it hopped onto Liv, talons scratching into her skin and leaving a multitude of shallow rivers of pink on her forearm. Its enthusiastic hopping and shrieking only ceased when Liv spotted the aforementioned canister and grabbed it, the owl immediately silencing and locking its unblinking eyes onto the lid, not even bothering to move when she lifted her arm to unscrew it.

"I think you need to lay off the steroids, mate," she laughed, arm trembling under the weight of the bird. She snickered again when the owl's beak became agape, watching her fingers vigilantly. "I haven't seen this much bottled excitement since Lucy discovered rum balls were going to be a staple at Cloverdilly's."

Liv fished a single treat out of the tin canister, which ended up looking like an mammoth kernel of corn that smelled like it had been previously lodged inside the salad-shooter of a large herbivore with intestinal disagreements. But before she could recoil at the pungent odor, Isthmus snatched it out of her hand. It emitted a slew of thrilled little hoots as it flew back to the fireplace mantle, its feathery back to Liv. The owl peered under its wing for a brief moment, as though it was leery that she might change her mind and take the kernel back.

Olivia Charles laughed, then stopped, breath nearly hitching when realizing that she hadn't openly laughed this much, pre-coffee, in... _awhile_. Years, probably. A lifetime ago, when the magic in her veins felt more like a promise rather than a curse. This simultaneously sobered and thrilled her, like... something she couldn't _explain_ , because it was perfectly inexplicable.

Maybe because it was something Liv felt she could get used to.

Which was frightening. Change in her life was often vast and drastic, like every letter she'd written to her father over the course of seven years arriving unannounced at her doorstep, unopened and yellowed with age. The key to Skarmere House no longer opening the front door, the windows locked, because beyond every room was abandoned. Pawning everything she owned except her grandmother's tea kettle to pay for her share of Cloverdilly Coffee.

But this felt like a whisper of change. Something like a metamorphosis. Something that did not involve following the magically-turbulent footsteps of kismet. This felt like was chasing her own.

So it was on a late October afternoon after an unseasonable snowfall, sitting atop a stranger's bed in a stranger's home, having just given a stranger's owl a treat that smelled of ass, that Olivia Lauren Charles decided to finally take back the reigns of her life.

"Fate," she said to the reposeful silence of the room, which was broken when Isthmus hooted in surprise. Liv closed her eyes, inhaled until her lungs felt deep with oxygen, then said: "Fuck off."

And she got out of bed.

Isthmus watched Liv take in the sight of the bedroom, appeased by the treat and regal-looking atop its perch now that it was no longer quite so dastardly to her state of cognizance. The room, in its part, was vaguely masculine in that it was large and anything ornamental was not overly florid. The furniture was all dark walnut, thick and sturdy and designed with simple but artful flourishes of an antique, probably constructed by a local carpenter a 100 years prior. Various articles of clothing littered the floor, however, namely black cotton shirts and several leather boots missing their mates.

Liv swiveled her head like a planet in orbit, before stepping back and nearly tripping on something that rolled out from under her bare foot. She caught herself on the edge of the bed, then bent over to investigate.

"Blishen's Firewhisky? Aged thirty-nine years," she read aloud, turning the empty bottle in her hands and running a finger across the mauve-colored label. She sniffed the mouth. " _Oof_. Cinnamon flavored. I think I approve."

Then, for reasons unknown, Liv dropped the bottle onto the bed and strode over to the nearest window. She shoved aside floral curtains that bore every shade of a mushroom, then batted aside the gauzy set behind. Bright, bucolic sunlight reduced Liv to squinting for the next moment or two, and then earnestly pressing her hands onto the warm windowpanes as the sight beyond began to come into focus.

There was something painfully beautiful about the sea of trees that encompassed her entire view, that she could already pick out thirteen different shades of green, that all of a sudden the home she was within felt both rustic and mystical, now realizing that it was the epicenter of a forest glade. A small pathway ran out of the forest, transforming into a cobbled walkway that looked as overgrown as the hedgerow Liv could see separating the small front lawn from the forest, not unlike a moat of a centuries-old ruin.

Immediately, however, Liv's eyes had trained onto the large motorcycle parked just outside the hedgerow. Its dark coating was swathed in green, no longer looking so daunting, and from the sunlight filtering down from above, it was peppered with silhouettes of leaves all across its body. They swayed as gusts of wind swayed the branches to and fro, looking like a river of foliage across the fenders.

_I rode on that_ , she thought idly, feeling like she was stepping into a dream. Then reality struck: _I almost got_ run over _by that_.

She ran her finger along a vine that was creeping up the window, before turning back to the room. Blinking into the dimness, Liv's eyes fell onto a nearby desk chair. Or, namely, that her jacket was strewn across the back of it, her own leather boots waiting tidily side-be-side below.

_Oh_ , she cleverly thought.

And automatically looked down at herself, noting with relief that she was still wearing her own shirt. Then she grimaced, also noting that throughout the past several hours of pure, undiluted _crazy_ , there were still rebellious bits of dried dough smashed against the grey fabric. She eyed the bed, where at least it had not smeared.

Venturing over to slip on her jacket and lace up her boots, all under the supervision of the fat eagle owl, Isthmus, who hooted every few moments to remind her of its existence, Liv glanced up and caught sight of something even more breathtaking and esoteric than a woodland abode or a motorcycle that could fly.

Wonder bubbled in Liv's chest. Thrill thrummed beneath her skin. Her eyes refused to blink, vaguely aware that her legs were moving on their own volition, boots skidding towards the nearest wall. Her fingers trembled, eyes wide, eyes brimming with something hot and alive, alive.

The walls were covered in damask paper the color of cream and apricots, but atop the wallpaper there were photographs upon photographs. Posters and banners and heraldry of a lion, newspaper clippings and a sundry amount of ' **Beware of Dog** ' signs.

Typically, this would be unremarkable. But everything in Olivia Charles's life was anything but, so, naturally, the photographs _moved_.

Liv's heart leapt and soared and sung with this revelation, this strange sight that she took as an epiphany that, _no_ , she was not alone in a world of magic. This was real and real and _real_. That the magic that flowed through her veins, that had seeped into her soul from whatever cause was, maybe, worthy of more than concealing it with her stratagems of normalcy. Liv accepted she was, by default, a freak, but maybe she wasn't a freak of a nature.

Or, at least, the only one.

" _Look on the bright side_ ," a voice echoed in her head. " _You're not alone anymore_."

"Sirius," Liv murmured, reaching up to touch the edge of the closest photograph.

It was black and white, as they all were. But this one depicted a laughing Sirius Black, head thrown back in revelry, eyes crinkled with uninhibited joy. His hair was shorter, but still he swept it back with a flick of a hand every few moments before slapping the back of the person standing next to him. There was something unequivocally mesmeric about that level of happiness in a person, that it was something that made the ugliness in the world shrink just a little.

His companion shared the same expression, laughter racking his chest, one hand clutching his ribs, the other clutching a pair of circular glasses whilst using the back to wipe tears from his eyes.

Slowly, Liv smiled. She wondered what had caused them such gaiety. Wondered if she would ever experience his full laughter unleashed in person, wondered how powerful it was. The Sirius in this photograph was young and roguish and limitless. The Sirius she had encountered was still all these things, but they were suppressed somehow. Shadowed.

Liv wondered if she would ever feel that same level of happiness.

Quickly, she tore her eyes away from the photograph, letting her eyes skim the others. She smiled at some, peered closer at others, fully acknowledging how enchanting the prospect of moving photographs were. These short, silent movies on paper.

None answered her bubbling questions, but they were a view to the other side. The world of magic she belonged to, but was not part of. She had no inkling what the red and gold banners with the word _Gryffindor_ meant, other than a lion seemed to symbolize whatever it was. The newspaper clippings were all of people on brooms—"Holy shit, that's not a stereotype?"—playing what looked to be some sort of a sport. Jocks all looked alike, even if they zoomed a hundred feet above the ground, because they all punched the air with victory fists when scoring a goal.

Another photograph that stood out more than the others was of four kids, no older than twelve, standing outside heavy oak doors wrought in iron. Liv detected Sirius immediately, snorting because his face was slightly pudgy with youth, grey eyes devilish as he used the tip of his wand to hovering inside another boy's ear, careful not to touch him. The kid, shorter than the rest with a scrunched-up face, was peering at the camera with an awkward smile, scratching at his ear every other moment with complete obliviousness.

Sirius's companion from the first photo was there, as was evident because his hairstyle was the same, with bangs the fell into his eyes. The glasses were there, too, which he kept pushing up the bridge of his nose as he used the tip of his wand to hover inside the same boy's other ear, careful not to touch him. The remaining boy, slightly taller than the rest, with scruffy hair and tired, intelligent eyes, was trying in vain to keep an amused smile from his lips whenever the shortest batted unwittingly at either side of his head.

There was only one still photograph, and Liv had to step on her tip-toes to gain a better look.

It was of a boy, in his mid-teens, with very similar features as Sirius, although they seemed smaller in comparison; Sirius was unquestionably magnetic to look upon, but this boy seemed an afterthought. Still, there was no possible way they couldn't have been related, because they shared the same tumbling mane of black hair, the same shaped eyes, the same way their eyebrows were the source of their expressions. There was something haughty about his, as he peered darkly at the camera, gaze unflinching.

There was something about this expression that lingered with Liv, almost hauntingly, and she was still side-eyeing it when she walked out of the room minutes later.

"All right," she said quietly, bracing herself as she wandered down a hallway. "Let's check out Narnia."

Isthmus gave a quick yawp before swooping down onto her shoulder. It clung to Liv's shirt with care, having decided that since they'd gotten past their bumpy introductions, they would now be fast friends. This caused a small, cockeyed smile to appear on Liv's face, and she reached up to stroke the owl's silky breast.

It hooted amicably, a wise sidekick to share her ventures in this strange, magical home.

And magical it was. Not unlike the sensation she'd experience with the photographs, Liv was struck with the wonderment of it all. That the arcane was more than real, it was more than a way of life; it simply was.

Magic was as inherent as breathing.

Her fingertips skimmed along walls, across gingham wallpaper in one hallway, then another that bore nothing but a dozen rough sketches of cathedrals wrapped in ornate but paint-chipped frames. Everything about the house was openness and warmth, like summer eventide when the temperature begins to cool.

Everywhere Liv looked there were keepsakes. Not the ones people buy out on holidays, but trinkets that were homemade, locally grown. Produced out of a familial intimacy that made her eyes hot when she looked at them for too long.

The home was magical in more than ways than one. It seemed unending, but not in the same sense Liv's childhood home had been; Skarmere House was unending with its vaulted ceilings and medieval corridors that always held an echo, a multitude of drafty rooms filled with the Victorian antiques her mother loved so much, or the untouched libraries that boasted rare books that no one ever read. This household was filled with personal memorabilia, like potted bowls imprinted with a child's hand, hand stitched quilts, colossal homemade candles sitting alongside crockery filled with brooms, daisies and tulips and several flowers she had never seen before falling out eclectic blends of vases and milk jugs. Each room had a different aroma, from cedar to lilac to lemon cleaner. Outside, a rooster crowed.

Liv spent several moments—Isthmus peering over her shoulder—at a door frame that bore the ascending markings of a child's height, along with age and date.

_**James**_ , it read, etched into the wood, alongside a rendering that was reminiscent of antlers.

This house was unending with a different sort of wealth, which left a throbbing pang in her chest with every room she peaked within, with every harmonious creak of a floorboard, until abruptly Liv was overwhelmed with the urge escape before she fell too much in love.

She was currently standing at the end of fifth—no, sixth, wait, _seventh_ —hallway, which branched off like a fork in the road.

Ahead were uneven stone steps that descended towards an archway that was too dim to see beyond, but above the stairwell a wooden sign with the words 'Kitchens' was scrawled in calligraphy. To her right was a back entrance to the house, its door a bright emerald green with a circular window that showed her the picturesque view of a sprawling dell filled with flowers and greenery, and another woodland pathway beyond another hedgerow covered in gorse.

Liv's fingers twitched. She was intrigued by the sign with its plural promise of more than one kitchen, and being an uncontrollable aficionado of baked goods, this sounded like the mother of all promise lands. And Sirius said he would meet her there.

But.

Still.

Liv eyed the emerald door, its brass doorknob naturally burnished from use. She could hear the lazy hum of honeybees investigating flowers. The wind was trilling again, a whisper of what it had been when she was on the motorcycle.

This was the closest Olivia Charles had felt to home in nearly a decade.

She turned right.

Isthmus clicked its beak in protest at Liv. Which she ignored, turned the doorknob and stepped outside, feeling more and more obligated to make the best of her time by exploring what she could.

Instantaneously, and simultaneously, Liv was bathed in bright, balmy sunlight and made breathless when a gust of fresh, rose-scented air forced her to take a step backwards. When the door groaned shut behind her, the owl took flight, nattering at her in a way that seemed very disproving of her choice not to venture to the kitchen like she was told, before it flew upwards.

Liv swore, shielding her eyes against the sun with both hands.

"They have a bell tower," she breathed incredulously. "They have a goddamn _bell tower_."

The house was much smaller than it seemed possible for the numerous rooms it held. Stepping back to view it in full, the building really was nothing more than a homey, thatched cottage sprouted straight from a fairy tale. It had been built beneath the largest oak tree Liv had ever seen, or maybe the oak came afterwards, deciding to grow from the soil and blossom like a flower so that its foliage sheltered the cottage from above. Its trunk was a gnarled twist of knotwork, and looked wider than her entire flat.

Only one thing pierced through the oak's thick leafage, however, and that was the bell tower. Liv had to squint against the sun's rays to garner a better look, and exhaled in disbelief once more. It was rather small, its masonry that of bright red brick, yet it somehow managed to make the white-washed walls and dark beams of the cottage into something all the more fantastical.

Every few moments Liv detected the half-hearted toll of the bell, as several owls flew to and from several perches and nests within the belfry.

"I need to stop reading fantasy novels," Liv muttered, walking along a garden path and stopping only to admire a vibrant red poppy.

Everything within her was shrieking _The Shire! The Shire! The Shire!_ that it almost became a sensory overload with how arcadian and timeless her surroundings felt. Nothing else could describe the picturesque beauty around her, with the blooming gardens and the bustling vegetable patches; it was the same enchanted beauty she'd experienced when looking out the window in the bedroom, pained by its existence.

Thrilled by its reality.

Liv was halfway towards the small woodland path she had spied earlier, bumblebees lazily swirling around her fingertips in curiosity, when she stumbled across a gray, long-haired cat soaking up sun alongside a scarecrow wearing a toque.

One of Liv's eyebrows spiked towards her forehead.

"Gamma radiation," she mused, laughing only out of sheer wonder. "They've gotta be injecting you all with the rads, because you are a _hulk_ of a cat."

The feline in question blinked it yellow eyes up at her, before emitting a series of sweet little chirps that defied its mass.

"Oh no," Liv smiled. "That was terribly cute. Stop it. I'll take you home with me."

The cat rose to its feet, immediately twisting between Liv's legs and meowing until she stroked its soft fur. It truly was a large feline, but it was a powerhouse of muscle whereas Isthmus was pure pudge, so its answering purrs sounded something akin to an engine. When Liv stepped away to resume her wanderings, the cat fell easily in pace, and even trotted off in front of her with the tip of its tail curved like an umbrella handle.

The cobbled garden walkway soon gave way into an overgrown trail that spliced itself into a copse, until it nearly disappeared as the trees around Liv grew thicker and taller and mightier, surrounding her and the cat like ancient sentinels allowing them passage. Sunlight barely managed to pierce the overhead leafage, and only the smallest dimples of light filtered down, looking like constellations when Liv peered up, and fallen stars when she glanced down.

"You know..." Liv began, tone lowering, because it felt strangely prohibited to talk above a whisper. "This is probably a bad idea."

The cat mewed.

"Alright. If you're game, I'm game."

As soon as the forest began to amass, the more defined another pathway became, so she followed it, not entirely knowing why despite the fact she couldn't be overshadowed by a cat in terms of intrepidity. Part of her yearned for a little bit of adventure, another part was simple curiosity, and another wanted to just say 'fuck it' and blindly thrust herself into a situation that had a highly probability of making her ponder her own sanity. It seemed to be the trend of the day, after all.

And it was better than allowing whatever cosmic power—fate, kismet, _The Force_ —she had kindly told to screw off to beat her to the punch.

Another part of her wondered what Sirius Black was doing.

Then, abruptly, the forest gave way to a small, perfectly spherical grove that looked like it had just fallen out of a fable. Sunlight swathed it in a hazy glow that seemed edged in green. To her left a large boulder lay, looking like some knight would eventually be cantering into the grove to climb atop the mass to pull out Excalibur. But no, it merely shimmered in the light, like tiny crystals were embedded on its surface.

Towards the back of the grove, however, was what truly caught Olivia Charles's interest.

It was the ruins of a church, small, like the grove, and becoming part of the grove itself as fingers of ivy ran across its crumbling stone facade. Its steeple lay at its door-less threshold. But the more Liv peered at it, the more repaired it appeared than lying about as a relic from a time long past. The foundation was being reinforced, and small vestiges seemed newer than others.

Although she was on the opposite side of the grove, Liv also saw the remnants of statuary deep inside the church. They looked like grayish specters waiting inside, or angels.

Warmth prickled the tips of Liv's fingers. Curiosity.

_Magic_.

As she moved to step forward, however, the cat sped in front of her, ears flat, hissing and spitting at the boulder. Which was strangely and inexplicably _moving_. But not moving like Sirius Black's photographs had, but in a way that raised the hairs of her arms.

In a way that was sentient, and when the boulder shifted, it appeared like flesh rippling rather than its previously hard, rocky surface. With the movement all the enchantment of the grove vanished because the most unearthly, rank odor assaulted her senses.

_Oh, no._

She almost gagged, eyes watering, because it smelled like someone had made stew out of sulfur, festering cat vomit, and seasoned it was a dash of death.

_Here we go again._

And then Liv froze, watching in slow motion as the cat batted at the mammoth gray bulk of _something_ , until it unfurled with a clumsy jerk of its appendages. It was still a something, because Liv had never once come across a ten foot, rubber-skinned creature that was distinctly humanoid. Nor anything that smelled so horrendous that it felt like all the hair follicles on her head had sizzled away from exposure.

It ambled from side to side like it was three sheets to the wind, until finally focusing on the cat. The cat yowled. The creature yawped unintelligibly, a sound that, honestly, reminded Liv of the time an old man at Cloverdilly tried to disguise his flatulence by skidding his chair across the floor. Both of which left marks.

Liv's breath hitched. Not because of the stench, but because the creature had finally noticed her and was currently trying to recall how to move its legs forward. It poked at its knees with a chubby finger in between unleashing a ghastly glower in her direction, before successfully taking a step. And then another. And it gained momentum.

No urgent sense of fear pricked at Liv's mind like it had when confronted via wandpoint by the barman at the Leaky Cauldron, no adrenaline seized at her heart like it had when she'd almost been turned into road kill by Sirius Black's motorcycle. There was a deep, brewing sense of danger, yes, but the pragmatic part of Liv's brain knew all she had to do was swiftly retrace her steps back to the safety of the cottage, find Sirius, and grill him about what sort of foul-smelling creatures lived in his best mate's parent's backyard.

But _no_ , the cat happened.

It refused to budge, bristling with protective intent, and even managed to dart forward and rake its large claws across the top of the creatures left foot. This caused it to halt in its endeavor to reach Liv, and probably didn't feel the rupture of its flesh, but the sight of blood seemed to trigger some sort of tantrum.

It bellowed angrily, loud enough that loose leaves fell from the trees above, and tried to flatten the cat with its overtly large, two-toed foot. This rage made it unpredictable in its speed, and nearly succeeded twice. Still, the cat refused to back down.

And because Olivia Charles was a genetically predisposed cat person, and despite all her bitterness with the world and all her misanthropic wiles, she was a complete and utter sap. And any decent human would recoil at the thought of a large, protective feline being squashed to a pulpy mess by a ten foot monstrosity whose speech capability rivaled farts.

Liv sprung forward, surprising herself with how sprightly her footwork was in lieu of the adrenaline now surging in her veins, ducking beneath the creature as it wound itself up for another earth-shaking stomp. She grabbed hold of the cat, half-carrying, half-dragging it because it was too large and its silken fur slipped in her grasp.

The cat eventually untangled itself from her clutches, springing away towards the other side of the creature. Unfortunately, it had its glassy eyes locked onto her, and Liv's rare bout of good luck could only last so long until the eventuality of her tripping over something happened.

Not that she was naturally clumsy, but something _bad_ was always destined to occur, and so Liv's foot caught within a snarl of ivy hidden beneath dead brambles and fallen leaves. She fell flat onto her face, all the oxygen in her lungs expelling with a great _whoosh_.

Her fingers clawed into the undergrowth, pain wracking throughout her body. First she tasted dirt, then the metallic tang of blood, and managed to form a poetic slew of profanities that she aimed towards the creature.

Then she opened an eye.

"Well," she said. " _shit_."

Liv managed to twist her body around, pulling it backwards into the heart-like hollow of a fallen tree before the creature's colossal, knobbed fist came crashing down on her. The ground shook. The musty scent of rotting wood commingled with the creature's puke-breath nearly did her in, making the edges of her vision warp.

Or maybe that was the fall.

The gray monstrosity twisted its lips into a gap-filled leer, raising its other hand straight above her. Liv's ears rang, her limbs shook, less out of pain and more of rage, because she had finally managed to find a world she belonged to, and already she was being taken away.

She refused to close her eyes, even as the fist came bearing down on her. Which was fortunate, because if she had, Olivia Charles would have never seen the flash of a shadow strike above her, or hear its hair-raising growls, or feel it shake in her bones like thunder.

Liv would never have witnessed the largest black dog she had ever seen sink its teeth into the creature.


End file.
